Friday, February 1

This is What We are Fighting

Among many on both sides of the political aisle there persists this screwball notion that America’s Constitution is, somehow, outdated or in need of a drastic overhaul. Solid evidence of this manifests in the way that so much of this nation’s judiciary—especially those of a particularly Liberal bent—feel compelled to needlessly “interpret” this explicit and well-written document. Not to be outdone, Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) refuse to abandon the field to their Democratic counterparts and have joined in the cry for limitations on First Amendment rights to free speech. Colorado’s ever-delightful Ann Barnhardt not so gently annihilated this intellectual midget in her 2011 two-part video.

In the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut schoolhouse massacre, there has been a renewed attack upon Second Amendment rights to bear arms as well. Once again, in their desperate effort to harvest votes from political quadrants that would sooner give birth to a porcupine backwards than ever vote Republican, the GOP is actively promoting restriction of Second Amendment rights.

There are few better examples of this frontal assault upon the Constitution than a recent New York Times article titled, “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution”, by op-ed contributor, Louis Michael Seidman, the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC and author of, “On Constitutional Disobedience”. The author recently made this statement on the CBS television network.

You Tube participant, Scott Wilhelmsen, took umbrage at this hit piece and posted an instructive video that encapsulates several of the NYT article’s main points.

What follows are verbatim quotes from the NY Times article and the CBS appearance, respectively:

AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse.

Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?

Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped us to grow and prosper.

Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.

The deep-seated fear that such disobedience would unravel our social fabric is mere superstition. As we have seen, the country has successfully survived numerous examples of constitutional infidelity.

But even if we can’t kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit.